German doctors have spoken out against proposals for young asylum seekers to undergo mandatory medical tests to ascertain their age.

The German Medical Association (Bundesärztekammer) said the checks were ethically wrong and unreliable.

Conservative politicians have called for tests such as X-rays to make sure young migrants are not lying about being under 18 to avoid deportation.

It follows outrage over the killing of a girl, allegedly by an Afghan migrant.

The 15-year-old was stabbed with a kitchen knife outside a shop in Kandel, in south-western Germany, last week. 

An Afghan refugee, who says he is the same age, is accused of attacking her after she broke off their relationship.

After the killing, the girl's father said of the suspect: "There's no way he is ever only 15... We hope that through the process we will now know his true age."

'Great uncertainties'Chancellor Angela Merkel's Bavarian allies, the CSU, wants all young asylum seekers to undergo medical tests if their age is in doubt. Methods include doing an X-ray on the hand to assess bone development, or measuring teeth. 

But Frank Ulrich Montgomery, president of the German Medical Association, said the tests had a large margin of error.

"The investigations are complex, expensive and burdened with great uncertainties," he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

"If you were to do this with every refugee it would be an interference in their human welfare."

German experts believe many young male migrants lie about being under 18 to get better access to housing and support.

​Currently officials try to determine the age of new arrivals through verbal interviews, while medical tests are voluntary. 

The CSU says it will push for the tests to become compulsory in coalition talks with the Social Democrats, who oppose such a move. 

"I want everyone who comes into our country and claims to be a teenager to be medically checked for their age," said the CSU's Joachim Herrmann, Barvaria's interior minister.

"Young people cost the state more money in special care and have a lower criminal liability. The state can not basically leave it that way."

The killing of the teenage girl in Kandel is the latest case to spark calls for age testing in Germany. 
​
An Iranian asylum seeker is already on trial for allegedly raping and killing a 19-year-old student in Freiburg in October last year. He initially claimed to be 16, but his own father told a court he was 33.

Published on BBC News on January 2, 2018

Germany has begun granting gays from Chechnya special visas on humanitarian grounds following reports that gay people are being tortured and killed in the Russian republic. 

The Foreign Ministry told The Associated Press on Thursday the first man arrived in Germany on Tuesday and four other applications for humanitarian visas are being reviewed. 

Gay activists and others have been alarmed by reports accusing police in Chechnya of detaining and torturing about 100 men suspected of being gay. The AP spoke with victims of the crackdown who supported the claims, though Chechen officials have denied the reports. 

Germany provides visas on "urgent humanitarian grounds" for people who can demonstrate they're in serious danger. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin last month to help protect gay rights in Chechnya.

Published on NBC news on June 8, 2017.

By Todd Stump
Everyone in Arbaz's family is dead.
One brother disappeared more than two decades ago and another died after losing a leg in a bombing and an arm to the Taliban, who sawed it off at the shoulder.

Arbaz's hosts have generously provided for his material needs and attended to his physical injuries, but after 11 months as a refugee in Germany, this is the first time the 23-year-old Afghani opened up about the trauma he experienced in his home and during his journey.

"Nobody knows my heart is crying," he told Dr. Shaifali Sandhya at a Red Cross refugee center in Berlin. "When I would tell people at home, they'd treat it as an ordinary thing."

To people in his homeland his experience is unexceptional, common enough not to be examined or thought about too much. The same is true for people in his new home. His fellow refugees lived through their own traumas and the staff at the resettlement centers have heard many similar stories.

The scar that runs down the face of Ferhad, a 20-year-old unmarried Syrian immigrant from Aleppo, is a lifetime reminder of the torture he suffered under interrogation. Arbaz contracted an infection during a long boat journey, causing severe abdominal pain and blood in his urine.

"These are clear signals to health professionals that they are in need of help. But what of the wounds that can't be seen?" Sandhya asked.

With Sandhya next to him, Arbaz sat patiently while questions and answers were translated from English to German to Urdu and then back again. Frustrated, he finally turned to Sandhya and surprised her, asking in her native Hindi, "How do I explain what goes on in my heart?"

In her years of counseling immigrants and helping them to cope with new environments and personal relationships, Sandhya learned that what might seem to be a matter of the mind to a mental health professional is frequently a matter of the heart to a patient.

"I've learned that you can't help a person if you ignore culture and family considerations, but until now, I've seen it mostly from the female perspective," she says. "This new experience has taught me that the traumas women suffer are often related to the traumas experienced by the men in their lives. But men in these cultures are reluctant to talk about them, so the problem goes untreated."

Hassan – whose name, like Arbaz's, has been changed to protect his identity -- told Sandhya that he had been a darji, a tailor. He was born to a Kurdish family of seven siblings in Afrin, a land wild with olive groves known as "liquid gold" in northern Syria.

"I had a normal life," the 32-year-old refugee said. "After my marriage, I stayed with my wife and children."

That changed in 2006 when Syrian President Bashar-al-Assad's forces pulled Hassan from his shop and out of his normal life. He was detained in a secret prison for his "political activities" and his quest for a new life began.

Upheaval in the lives of refugees like Hassan can cause trauma that manifests in ways having profound effects on both refugees and the countries where they settle.

Sandhya said psychologists know that when no constructive outlets are available for mental anguish, symptoms can emerge as what they call "somatic" pain, or pain related to the body and distinct from the mind.

"Somatic pain can manifest itself in many guises including malaise or chronic bodily aches, but has no diagnosable medical cause," she explains.

Further disguising the problem is that these trauma manifestations may be shaped by culture, so they deviate from the typical ways Americans, for instance, may experience PTSD, Sandhya said.

"Salvadoran female civil war refugees can suffer from "calorias"-- a perception of intense heat in their body. For Cambodians, it is sometimes manifested as hallucinations of vengeful spirits," she said.

Headaches, Sandhya learned, was how Syrian men here are experiencing the phenomenon.
"I have huge headaches. I feel sad but I don't cry . . . I am living with men and I cannot have them see me cry," Hassan said.

"Have you spoken to Aliya and Imran since you left?" Sandhya asked, inquiring about Hassan's children.

Rubbing his temple, Hassan replied, "I have a headache. I am sorry. I want to tell you more… but I cannot."

Another coping mechanism is unwavering faith. Many refugees credit Allah with their survival. Yet another is dissociation, a term psychologists use to describe the separation of normally related mental processes, which results in one process functioning independently from the rest.

"It is a coping mechanism to help the person continue to function in the aftermath of emotionally traumatizing life events," Sandhya said. She sees it regularly when refugees tell their stories, describing horrific events in anodyne, emotionless ways.

Arbaz told his story as if he was reading a telegram; short declarative sentences delivering horrifying news and ending abruptly.

"I saw little children take pictures of the war, of dead corpses."

"People were being flagellated, strung up as chickens with their flesh torn up."

Even before he turned 13, four of Arbaz's siblings died, lost to bombing and Taliban attacks. When he was 16, another sibling died. His parents, unable to cope with their misfortune and without treatment for their own trauma, died in quick succession, grief-stricken.

Left out of his retelling was any description of his own horror at having witnessed such events, the terror he must have felt under constant fear of death, or the heartbreak of watching his parents die.